RIEKO (Rieko Whitfield) is an multidisciplinary artist, composer and the founding director of Diasporas Now, a live art community and cultural agency supporting Global Majority artists. Her practice moves between experimental music and performance, as well as contemporary art, and has taken her through residencies at Tate and the ICA, and now Turner Contemporary. The multi-hyphenate’s debut EP, Regenesis, retold the story of the Shinto goddess Izanami, and whilst her highly-anticipated forthcoming EP, Zakuro, turns to the Buddhist tale of Kishibojin, the child-devouring demon who becomes a protector, trading human flesh for pomegranate seeds.
Zakuro is a four-track EP, releasing on 12th November, uniting sweeping string arrangements and crushing electronic beats, cavernous minimalist piano and vocals to craft a sonic terrain that moves from roaring lament to tender expressions of hope. To mark the release, RIEKO hosts Zakuro Rising, a ceremony at Living Womb (formerly Algha’s Plantroom) in east London on Thursday 12th November, with a live performance of the EP, a sound bath, DJ sets and an art exhibition with her collaborators, including Yraki, HYDRA, Lucy Feng, Detroit Law and Christophe Szpajdel (tickets available here).
Ahead of the EP release, we caught up with RIEKO to talk about how Kishibojin found her, writing for strings, her SEANCES workshops and what comes next…
You’ve got an upcoming EP called Zakuro which is a truly great listen. The project is built around the Buddhist tale of Kishibojin, the child-devouring demon who becomes a protector, trading human flesh for pomegranate seeds. When did you first come across that story? And why did it feel like the right tale for this moment?
RIEKO: My mother used to tell me this relatively obscure Buddhist story when I was young, every time we’d eat pomegranates. I think the visceral imagery of the fleshy fruit had left an impression on me, because somehow decades later the memory of Kishibojin resurfaced around 2021 when I first started writing the early origins of this EP.
In a way it’s not even an artistic choice for me – these entities come to me unannounced and won’t leave me alone until I channel them through music. It was the same thing with the Shinto goddess of creation and destruction Izanami, when all of the music and imagery for my debut EP Regenesis came to me within a span of several months in vivid dreams and meditations. After years of not writing music, I suddenly felt the need to retell her story with my own narrative through songwriting. In a way I suppose, it’s quite collaborative, because the work I love the most I feel like I’m not the one writing it – it’s always being written through me. What an honour, to be nurtured creatively by such powerful feminine forces.
So here I am two EPs later, with new tracks I wrote to tell that story of Kishibojin. I’ve also recorded the final EP of my mythology-themed trilogy Metanoia – inspired by another entity that I won’t yet disclose. As soon as the music is finished and I release it into the world, the entities are released with it.
Channeling specific entities is quite an intense process, which is why after this EP trilogy, I think I’m going to leave the mythology project behind me. I can just be RIEKO.
For Zakuro, I think the songs are really relevant to the times we live in now – there are a lot of shadows enveloping the world, but so too within it, hope for the future. We should never stop planting gardens, so our future progeny can live to enjoy flowers and fruit – the most beautiful and sensual expressions of what it means to be fully alive. I really mean this beyond just the biological sense – progeny in artistic expression, in cultural transformation, in beyond-human legacies, as future ancestors. We need to mother new realities into existence.
Your earlier single “Fruit”, the EP’s title Zakuro and the prayer in “Pendulum” all circle a similar image. Is fruit something you’ve been building towards for a while or did it appear once the Kishibojin story was referenced?
RIEKO: Fruit really came to me in my Kishibojin era, but before that I think I’ve always been inspired by nature. For many years, I almost didn’t see a point in making art, when everything beautiful already exists in flowers, in trees, in oceans, in birdsong. But I think it has always been music that brings me back to creation – I’m adding to this great symphony of universal expression, with my own unique contribution.
Within the EP, there are moments where you combine string arrangements with crushing electronic beats. When you start a track, does it begin with the strings, the beats or the voice, and how do you prevent the quartet becoming a decorative layer over the electronics?
My first instrument at age five was the violin, so for as long as I can remember I have heard my own string scores in my head. As a child I loved going to the orchestra, and after returning home, mimicking the movements of the conductor with my arms to the melodies in my head. It was only with Zakuro that I finally had the technical understanding to compose invisible ensembles into Ableton, and then bring in real players to play my sheet music.
So for some songs, like “Love” and “Pendulum,” I’d say the melodies came to me as string scores in my head, which I used to perform live as toplines with my voice or on the piano, and then later rewrote for strings as I had always intended.
“Fruit” I wrote on the piano and then added strings as the last step – more as another character in this song, like this spectral presence. For the beats I worked very closely with my collaborator and production mentor Mariano Sibilia (known under his artist name Yraki). I have a pretty solid idea of what I want, then I communicate every sound in poetic detail, and then we shape everything together in the studio.
The record has heavy-metal intensity as well as classical writing and club music. Where does metal come from in your own listening and is that intensity a way to release something quieter music can’t?
RIEKO: I have been thinking about this a lot lately, especially as I’ve been working for months with the legendary metal designer Christophe Szpajdel for my own name’s logo. I used to love going to metal concerts as a teenager, and now I still find myself drawn to darker, heavier, and profound experiences: The liberatory movement of sweaty bodies in the early morning hours of a rave, or the all-consuming seduction of staring out into the ocean at night. The feeling of tuning into my own world so intensely when I’m channeling art that I lose all sense of time and place, or the electric connection in meandering evening conversation with someone who really sees you. In the shadows, in the depths, there is so much beauty.
And of course, my first real love of music was the guitar. It was my first instrument where I started writing my own songs, where I felt liberated from the rigid pursuit of perfection with sheet music and concert recitals. Even just the feeling of the guitar resonating on my body, or fiddling with effects pedals, the knobs of the amplifier, and cassette tape recorders with my fingertips – it’s one of the first places sonically I felt at home.
You trained as a painter before working in sound and performance. Do you still compose visually, thinking in the likes of colour and texture? And did a particular image guide this EP?
RIEKO: I can’t not see images when I write music. I see moving shapes with distinct textures, colours, and velocities, which sometimes translate into specific body movements or choreographies. Being fully embodied actually, is kind of a pre-requisite for me to write music or perform on stage. I think I left painting behind, primarily because it was impractical with the number of times I had moved between cities, countries, and continents throughout my adult life, but also because painting feels too two-dimensional for me once the oils dry.
Now I kind of think of music composition as a more abstract form of filmmaking – I see specific scenes or characters in my mind like a film as I am composing. Those usually end up informing the visuals around the music’s world-building, which then bleeds into the world-building of my real life, and vice versa.
You’ve described yourself as thinking more like a designer than an artist, prototyping at every stage. What did you prototype on this EP?
RIEKO: I was already publicly performing pieces of this Zakuro project five years ago when I first started writing it, and throughout those years I developed a deeper relationship with those songs as they slowly began transforming to their final recorded form. The incubation period has been very long, but once the EP is released, what everyone else will hear is something that has already lived a whole life in my studio, on the stage, with my audience, and in my body.
The upcoming “Pendulum” video with Detroit Law plays with reversed and forward-running shots, on a crumbling walkway in the middle of an empty sea. How do you two build a visual language together? Does the vision come before the song or after?
This video I think is an example of how my real life bleeds into my art. Detroit had this idea of playing with time, and made me learn the entire song double speed and backwards, which I found deliciously challenging as a performer. I thought Pendulum was the perfect track for this concept, because it’s really speaking about holding hope for softer worlds and compassionate futures, through the swinging pendulum of non-linear time.
And then, I sent him a few videos on my phone of my near daily walks along the walkway of the Walpole Tidal Pool, close to my home in Cliftonville, Margate. I also think this town, with a coastline of 20th century architecture slowly sinking to the sea, has this aching quality of being reclaimed by the elements. I also find beauty in learning to let go of the past, and creating something regenerative in its afterglow.
As my body undulates and collapses into the sun on the horizon, I repeat the refrain: “Empires fall in the light of the sun.” This film captures a seaside ritual that serves as both a swan song and a summoning; hazy atemporal visions “through the equilibrium / Softer still for worlds to come.” That’s how this collaboration for Pendulum was born.
I’m wearing a look by Soma Faitanin and Genevieve Devine that Detroit helped me put together, which really embodies this feeling of achronicity. To me the whole look feels like something both ancient and futuristic, armoured yet feminine.
Then Detroit insisted we shoot everything in the tiny window between sunset and dusk, all while singing and moving backwards, so we really nailed this in a few takes. It was so much fun but also totally insane.
You’ve held residencies at the Tate and the ICA, you’re now at Turner Contemporary, and you’ve spoken about bringing your SEANCES there. For those who don’t know, could you tell us more about SEANCES.
RIEKO: SEANCES by RIEKO is my signature workshop methodology that involves an orchestral guitar sound bath, guided meditation, and automatic writing. I’ve developed this practice over many years, beginning with my MA at the Royal College of Art, and continuing through to workshop-focused residencies at Tate, ICA, and Turner, and many institutional and university commissions.
I connect participants to their creative intuition by channeling past, present, and future selves – or something I refer to as time travel – by continuously moving pen on paper through specific prompts, while in a meditative, semi-altered state. Essentially this is a form of guided shadow work, so you can go really deep if you allow yourself to. I have been practicing automatic writing and drawing daily for as long as I can remember, but it has been through fine-tuning the SEANCES that I’ve been able to harness this power into something I can systematically rely on to connect to my most authentic self, and to create a feeling of centredness.
I would say SEANCES is my personal secret behind my entire artistic practice, and basically this entire life I have willed into existence. RIEKO is a future self I continuously channel into the present.
You co-founded Diasporas Now in 2021, a live art community and cultural agency supporting Global Majority artists working across experimental music, and now release your own music through it. What has the role taught you over the last few years?
One thing I’ve learned through Diasporas Now, is that live programming can be an art medium in itself. I feel so blessed to have curated and performed in so many incredible projects, from DIY club nights to Museum Lates, and nurtured these networks of magical people across diverse practices, geographies, and ancestral backgrounds.
Diasporas Now has also been this incredible incubator for exploring interdisciplinary approaches to sound and music – not just for myself but many of the artists we have supported.
Also, recently I’ve been really enjoying matchmaking artists who have never met before and allowing them the space and freedom to improvise a new work together. A dancer with a violinist, or a poet with a pianist – nothing replaces live experiences that can only exist in the present, witnessed only by the people in the room with you.
I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: Create art fearlessly, and if the infrastructure for your art doesn’t exist, then create that fearlessly too. So maybe then Diasporas Now is a garden of fruit trees, built brick by brick and seed to soil – and one that was always designed with the intention to nourish sustainability for years to come.
When Regenesis came out, you mentioned in another interview that you were beginning to write songs for a debut album. Is Zakuro a step towards that, or a world of its own, and what’s next for RIEKO?
RIEKO: Zakuro is a world of its own, and a bit of a continued evolution from Regenesis, as the penultimate work within a trilogy of EPs. I have already written, recorded, and filmed my final EP Metanoia, which will conclude the trilogy. I think after this, the music for my debut album will take new sonic directions.
But like all of my other work, elements of the album have been soft-launched in live performances over many years. I’m considering including reworks of some of the first ever songs I wrote at 14-years-old – which were also always about ancestral transformation through non-linear time. I’m really excited to see where this new era takes me.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. For now, and particularly for those in London, come join me for Zakuro’s EP launch event, called Zakuro Rising, on 12th November at Living Womb (formerly known as Algha’s Plantroom) in Hackney Wick. There will be a SEANCE followed by a live performance of the EP, a sound bath by my mother Noriko Whitfield, DJ sets and guest appearances by Yraki and HEZEN, spatial design by HYDRA (anna gloria flores), and an art exhibition of all of the incredible collaborators including Lucy Feng, Jesse May Fisher, Detroit Law, and Christophe Szpajdel, who have contributed to the fully-embodied, audio-visual world that is Zakuro.